Cosmic Queries – Surviving the Laws of Physics with Steve-O

How fast is a porta-potty slingshot? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and professional stuntman and comedian, Steve-O, break down the science of Jackass, explosions, and what it takes to survive the laws of physics.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  He held this hose up to his butt. I just started barving in the mask. Like, I didn't smell anything. Nothing came.

• 0:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It didn't even need the smell.

• 0:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, a Cosmic Queries edition of a special kind. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And, Steve-O, this is the man of Jackass, one of many players in that franchise. So, Steve-O, welcome to StarTalk.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Well, thank you for having me. It's exciting.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a comedian, a professional stuntman, best known for participating in the franchise Jackass, which is not only on TV, but multiple movies. You've got a new book out. Let me get the title of this book. "A Hard Kick in the Nuts: What I've Learned From a Lifetime of Terrible Decisions." People like, this is like, it sounds like a self-help topic, and people totally get into that topic. So, I wish you well on that, and we'll talk more about it. And you've got a bucket list tour. So, this is your onstage, you're doing crazier, more extreme stunts than ever made it to the screen or to television? Is this in a theater stage? What is this context for this?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Tour theaters, you know, from like 1,000 to 2,000 seats. And it's a multimedia show. So, the crazier stuff than ever before happened as I put the show together. And after each bit in the show, I pay it off by playing video of the story that I just told.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay, okay. And so, you are a household name in an entire demographic of this country. And, in fact, when we put out our request for questions, it was like flooded with people who are your fans and who want to see whatever might be the mix of the stunts that you do with whatever physics might be behind it. Either physics you've thought of or haven't, and I'm here to fill in some of those blanks, if necessary. So, in this particular episode, you're serving not only as my co-host, but as the guest. So, you'll be reading the questions that people have sent to you. So...

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But before we start that, have psychologists looked closer at you to see what's going on inside your head?

• 2:34Speaker 00

  I don't think so, and I think it's pretty straightforward. I'm an attention whore.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's okay. That, that, boom, there it is. You got the whole explanation.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's really that simple. And speaking of physics, quite literally, one hour ago, I was jumping a skateboard onto a moving car. This was my plan. I just bought a new Tesla Model Y. And, and I had a vision of, of the car coming towards me and jumping up onto the hood and skateboarding over and dropping off the back, of course.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because it has that very curved dewdrop shape to it. Is that why?

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yep. I was looking at it. I thought that, I thought that that was very skateable.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, you didn't actually do this. You just thought of doing it.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  No, no, I, I was just jumping onto it, but I didn't complete the whole thing. I got a friend of mine to build, build the hood a little further down so that it, so that I could, it was kind of a wedge ramp which the Tesla was pushing. And so that I could get onto the hood more, more, more easily.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you might have died before this.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  I was only going five miles an hour, nothing.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you might have been injured before this podcast.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  I might have, yeah. I still got to do that. We need to build something onto the back.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you're still, still dreaming that one up?

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm glad you, you survived for this podcast, because I'd feel bad if, if that, that never didn't, that one didn't work out. So you say a bucket list tour, normally a bucket list is things you want to do before you die.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And these are things that you might die doing, so you're doing them before you die? Or is it just things you've dreamt up your whole life and thought you'd put them all in one show?

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Correct. That, that's, they're ideas that I've had for, for, in some cases, decades. And it's not like a morbid, like, I'm gonna die, so I've gotta hurry up and do these things. It's more a case of me recognizing that there's a finite amount of time left for me to be able to do these type of crazy stunts. So

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As when you're an old man on the porch, it's not happening, right?

• 4:57Speaker 00

  Right. I mean, that's the first thing I say in the show is that I find myself in a terrible situation. I'm Steve-O in my 40s. And I think that it gets a good little laugh and the idea that, wow, you know, Steve-O in my 40s, it's a

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because you were Steve-O in your 20s when all this began, right?

• 5:17Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So I'm delighted to report that you're alive and healthy. I mean, this is, this is good.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you got questions there? Do you want to start reading to them?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Okay, the first question comes from Chris Knopp. For Steve-O, longtime fan ever since your earliest days of filmmaking. Always able to produce some good laughs and frankly, ballsy stunts that no one else would be willing to do. Has there ever been anything intriguing about science and physics for you? And if so, what sparked it?

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because what I would say there is you, you know, you can't go at your stunts. You got to understand some laws of motion, gravity. There's got to be some physics foundation within you.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Before you attempt much of this. So how does that all settle out within you?

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, the question continues, has your career changed this for you, such as injuries forcing you to learn more about these things? Okay, so I think that, has there ever been anything intriguing about science and physics for you? Again, I'm an attention whore. I've always sought to, you know, make an impact on people, to be notable, to be shocking and entertaining. And my way of going about that was to do stunts. And the stunts that I've done, The stunts that I do are designed to make me appear really crazy. Like, this guy, he could die, he's out of his mind.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Like, this is so wild and unhinged. When in reality, for the most part, everything that you see me do is something that I started doing on a very low level and just gradually worked my way up. In the beginning, it was a lot of jumping off of, like, buildings into swimming pools, like, across gaps. And, you know, I would be doing a flip off of a three-story roof into four feet of water. And there's some physics in that. You know, I had to start off, you know, on the, just the second floor balcony and then go to the third floor, you know, and learn how to hit the water and curve in.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  So that's one example.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's a very important revelation, what you're telling us. And thank you for even admitting this, is that you have made your stunts safer than they look.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Oh, by design, 100%.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, and that's the whole foundation of it. So it really has to say, do not try this at home. Because if you just tried at home, you would not have put in the homework necessary to end up surviving and even thriving in the face of those stunts.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Correct. And we always did have that warning, "These stunts are performed by professionals. Do not attempt anything you're about to see." And I think that there's a contingent of the audience that sees that warning and maybe they're dyslexic to some extent because it says, "Dare."

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Dare you?

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And YouTube is full of such dares, yes.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All around.

• 8:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, did you take physics in high school?

• 8:44Speaker 00

  I suppose I did. I don't remember very well. I just remember I did quite well in in school. I mean, I don't know quite well. I was like a solid B student and and a good kid through the first couple of years of high school. And then in my my junior year of high school, that was when I sampled a marijuana cigarette and and

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh oh, uh oh, reformatting this, here it comes.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  And it it kind of had me, you know, stop doing quite so well in school. And and I remember trigonometry did not go very well. Trigonometry and marijuana.

• 9:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the age, yeah, 11th grade. Yeah, that's trigonometry right there.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Trigonometry and weed do not mix.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That should be the title of your book. That's your next book, okay? I love that.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  By that measure, I think physics and weed don't mix either. So there was a there were a number of classes I really underperformed in, and physics may have been one of them.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what what I would say is, there's a lot of physics you can glean by trial and error. And as you said, you did it smartly by incrementing your steps. But I can say that if you if you take some physics, even this late in your life, you might see other stunts you could perform. Once you realize what the physics is doing, beyond whatever you were sort of inventing in your your crazy sleepless nights.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just a thought.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  I don't know if I'm gonna end up taking a physics class, but but

• 10:31Speaker 00

  Put it on my radar.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On your radar. To know some physics is to be good at matter, motion, and energy.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you think about those three things. And all three of those are completely balled up in what it is you do.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your body is in motion, you land from gravity, you and in physics, you get to calculate all of that. And you get to see, well, how fast can I go before that happens? Or what is the friction between me and that surface? Can I reduce the friction or increase the friction, depending on what you need? These are entire chapters in an introductory physics book. So

• 11:07Speaker 00

  There's one I've got on my to do list, which will happen in the beginning of next year. It's rather simple. I bought a smart car for the for the purpose of crashing it into a brick wall to make sure the airbags work.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  And that one-

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But a smart car is that little car that you can park almost anywhere between two other cars.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  And I just love the irony of doing that in a smart car, you know.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  But the thing is, this is where I'm gonna need the physics because it's not something that I can start small and work my way up. If I'm crashing this car into the wall, there's only one shot at doing this.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  I don't want it to be underwhelming and I don't want it to be too much where I really get hurt. So I need to act-

• 11:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're in the car when it happens?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the whole point.

• 12:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you said I'm going to crash this car into a wall?

• 12:07Speaker 00

  I'm gonna drive the car into the wall, so.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and this is the smallest car in the marketplace? Okay, okay. So that could be your tomb.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  I've gotta, I've gotta figure out the science of that one to get the sweet spot about what's gonna be the most impressive rate of speed into the wall to get the most footage.

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's, here's what you do. You go knock on the door of the NTSA, National Transportation Safety Association and say, lend me one of your crash test dummies.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's the plan is to dress up as a crash test dummy.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, oh, okay. You got that thought out already?

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so what you need is look at their data.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they will show you at what speed above which, because they test all these cars, right? Because they have to report their safety records before they're even marketed. So you find out at what speed before the chest of the crash test dummy collapsed or before their kneecaps broke by, you know, by the- By the front of the car moving into their legs. So you should be able to get some prior data on this.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Right. It's gonna be great. You know, there was another one. I was on tour in Niagara Falls. And, and I got just interested and looked up a video of people who went over Niagara Falls deliberately. And it was a fascinating video I watched, but I think there had been like 12 people or so who, who did it deliberately. And it became evident by the end of this video that the people who put like real effort into planning it out fared pretty well.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  And I got a kind of obsessed with the idea and I reached out to this, this company that, um, that works for NASA, but it's not called NASA, but they work in Pasadena. They, they, these, all the scientists in Pasadena.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could be Jeff Propulsion Labs? Cause that's a branch of NASA and they're in Pasadena. So.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  JPL.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Jet Propulsion Labs?

• 14:12Speaker 00

  JPL. Yeah. Um, and I didn't hear back from them. There was guys asked and I wanted to help building a crash capsule to go over Niagara Falls and.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I, I probably would not have returned those emails.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In all fairness.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The rational universe out there, but go on.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  My buddy, my buddy from Jackass, Chris Pontius, um, masterfully got me to stop pursuing that idea. By telling me, dude, it's been done.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  You know, like we're pioneers, man, you know, like we, we do things that have never been done. Don't go, uh, don't go, you know, doing other people's stuff.

• 14:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we'll take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get to the next question with Steve O.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  All right.

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, one of the great jackasses of our generation when StarTalk returns.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Bringing the universe down to earth, this is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. I've got Steve O. right here with us, who is a beloved participant in the Jackass franchise from the beginning, and he's got a new book with, got the best title ever, A Hard Kick in the Nuts: What I've Learned From a Lifetime of Terrible Decisions. And he's on a bucket list tour, visiting a theater near you to demonstrate some of the craziest stuff he's ever dreamt up. So, Steve O., thanks for being on StarTalk. And you've been, not only my guest, but my co-host, reading the questions that have come to us from our Patreon fanbase. So why don't you read the next question?

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Okay, here we go. This comes from Dade Bloomfield. "Hello, Dade from Milwaukee here. Steve O., have you ever done the math to see how fast your porta potty slingshot was going?"

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  I have not.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For me, that was the most famous one. I'm sorry.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  What?

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was, that one, nothing else compared to that, for me. But...

• 16:36Speaker 00

  I don't disagree. I think that that was, that was my most iconic Jackass moment. And I was never too concerned with how fast it was going, but I think how high it was going, or, you know, how high it went, is probably the most notable, perhaps. I think it was a good 100 feet in the air.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  100 feet in the air. So, as you know, in modern baseball, they calculate all manner of statistics from a hit ball, what the exit angle is, what the exit velocity is, how fast the bat was moving. And so, you could just invite some of those folks, anytime you do a projectile stunt, they could have it totally analyzed for you, coming out the other side. So, just remind me, inside that porta potty, was it clean?

• 17:29Speaker 00

  It was not clean. The idea was for it to be filled with poo. However...

• 17:36Speaker 00

  As, um, uh, you know, a part of the, the Motion Picture Film Association, um, you know, we have to abide by, um, what's called OSHA. OSHA, Occupational Safety.

• 17:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Safety Hazards, yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Administration, yeah, yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  So, according to OSHA, um, it was against the rules to fill the porta potty with human poo. However, it was not against the rules of OSHA to fill the porta potty with dog poop. And if you can believe it, they've found, they found a company which sold poop. Like, you could buy as much dog poop as you wanted. And the name of the company, believe it or not, I swear I'm not making this up. It was that this company was called We Do Do Do. We Do Do Do. And, uh, they bought lots and lots of dog poop and filled up the porta potty with that.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is for all needs that people have for dog poo. That's.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Right, and, and, uh, I'll tell you, I, I had, uh, just gotten two dogs around the time of that movie. And, um, after I filmed that bit, when I would walk my dogs and, and pick up their poo, I would bend over, pick up the poo, and I'd look at it and think, man, I am gnarly.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  I'm a gnarly guy.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, what's the subtitle of your book? Uh, What I've Learned From A Lifetime Of Terrible Decisions?

• 19:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So are there, are there moments from that book that you can share that are sort of other sort of crazy moments?

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You should have thought twice about it?

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. For, for my second comedy special, I, um, because there's, there's a multimedia thing. I, my, all of my, my comedy is, is multimedia. And so I wanted to have a really big, fantastic ending. And the idea I came up with for that was to bring in, um, like a pyrotechnics guy and, uh, get real, like, impressive explosions going on to, like, blow up my living room of my house with me in it. And, and I'd had all these silly little things blowing up. And each thing was a little bit more, um, sort of, uh...

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Ambitious than the last and I kept getting away with all these these explosion stunts and you know nothing was happening to me and so ultimately I decided well I've gotta get like kind of hurt you know like I can't just walk away with this and nothing happened. By the end of this shoot I actually my buddies and I we were hollowing out model rocket engines and so this this rocket engine fuel from the model rocket engines.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  We sprinkled it all over.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So SD's makes these rockets and I remember the D engine was the largest engine and you put several of those you build a Saturn V rocket they had one of those.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so yeah so you knew where to get your explosives is what you're saying.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  Yeah we we we got a lot of model rocket engines we had a whole team hollowing them out in the garage and we sprinkled sprinkled the rocket engine fuel all over my living room floor and I laid down in it and did snow angels and my buddies lit it with me laying in it and yeah it was in fact true I ended up I ended up five days later in a burn unit having skin graft surgery on 15% of my body.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this sounds like one day you're not gonna get through it if it keeps accelerating in this way that's what it feels like to me.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  Or or it sounds like I've closed the book on the fire stunts.

• 21:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  You know there's certain things there's certain times when when you gotta recognize you've reached the end of a trail.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah I'd say 15% skin graft yes end of the trail there.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally. You got another question?

• 22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we actually just answered it. Connor Holm asks, hey, Steve, when has physics screwed you over the most?

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, physics, just to be clear, physics is doing what it does.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's not, it's not trying to screw you over. It has no, it has no agency.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  You know, there's, there's so much I'd love to talk to you about in this regard. Like the, the concept of good and bad is, it's such a, a, a mental construct that we've come up with. There is no such thing as good or bad. There's simply that which is, there's.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, okay, no, there's that which is, and then you nuance it with a good or bad. Right. The is is more foundational, clearly.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And whether or not that is, is good or bad. And you can say, is it good for my health or longevity?

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is it bad for you? So you, you can ask those.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Okay, I like that. I like that.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can save some of those for the end. We can go all philosophical if you want.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. There's, um, there's no such thing as punishment. There's just the, the law of cause and effect.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  Exactly. And Connor's question continues. He says, and are you still able to contribute to the process of producing children?

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How politely asked that was.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  I bet this is actually part of my bucket list show. There, there was, there was an idea, the oldest idea of law on the bucket list. It was called the vasectomy Olympics. And it was inspired by a joke I heard when I was 12 years old, which was, what is the definition of macho? It's a man who jogs home from his own vasectomy. And, uh, you know, being, being the attention whore that I am, I've never wanted anything more than to be, to be macho. And I grew up with the idea that I would get a vasectomy and then, then really go, really go nuts. So when I'm planning to do it.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we need evidence of your vasectomy.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I, I, I got that covered. It's a multimedia show.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, of course.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  I've got a, I've got the most hilarious vasectomy video ever produced. But before I got the vasectomy, I just couldn't do it without first going to get a sperm count at the fertility clinic. Because people have been asking me the same question, like after all the terrible things that have happened to your nuts, can you still, could you have kids even if you wanted? And, um, and, uh, what I learned when I went to the, the fertility clinic, that the average man has, believe it or not, 20 to 30 million sperm per millimeter or per milliliter of semen.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  And your boy clocked in at 51 million.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  So I, but.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what you're saying is over all these years, your nuts have actually been stimulated.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Right. If it doesn't kill you, it actually makes you stronger. Except despite the fact that I've got a remarkably high sperm count, like they're, they're all swimming sideways.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all, they're all on wheelchairs.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crutches come to me.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's worth noting.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's give, uh, uh, so just to finish out on the laws of physics. So I, I'm just defending the laws of physics that they have no agency here.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That they'll do whatever the laws of physics allow them to. And so it's a matter of you navigating that, that that's really all that's going on.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Is it safe to, to describe the laws of physics as the natural law of cause and effect? Is there any difference?

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, there are some things that have no obvious cause, like radioactivity. Uh, when a, when an element decays from a higher element for a heavier element to a lighter element. It does it on its own time. We cannot predict when it will happen. It's sitting there minding its own business and then bada bing, it changes. And without any obvious cause. So we're forced to say it just is. Right now, what is true is that all the atoms of a particular kind have a very repeatable half-life. Okay, so the half-life is over this amount of time, half of them remain

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  yet to convert to another element. And then that you wait the same amount of time and half again. And so it keeps halving all the way down. And so some live a longer time, some don't. And it's a mystery per atom, what each atom is going to do next. So I can't call that a cause and effect.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Okay, I love that. And that makes-

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just is.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  It makes perfect sense. Okay, the last question was from Connor in Squim, Washington. Now we're gonna move on to-

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can time for just one more before this break.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Okay, let's do it. From Aaron. Hey, Steveo and Neil. This is Aaron writing in from Richmond, Virginia. Here's a question you can both weigh in on. In the fart mask stunt from Jackass 2, do you think there was a real possibility the mask could explode from the amount of methane being produced by Preston Lacy? Thanks for doing this episode. Yeah, dude. Now I can answer this.

• 27:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that. I love that.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Are you familiar with-

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll lead off and then when we come back from the break, you pick it up. Okay? So just lay down some physics here and some chemistry. So methane is chemically the element carbon attached to C four hydrogen atoms. So it's C H four. And it is the byproduct of of microbes basically digesting, eating, we call it digesting, eating their food in an environment that has no oxygen. So deep in your gut, there's no oxygen. So it's what we say anaerobic. So that's deep in your gut. And so there are microbes that just love it there.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of their byproducts is methane, which happens to be highly flammable. It is highly flammable. And so that old trick you might have heard in camp, okay, let's try to light their farts. You know, that actually comes from foundations in chemistry and physics. There's energy stored in that molecule. And so that if you bring a flame to it, you break apart that molecule and energy gets released. And depending on how much of it's there, it'll just be a flash of a flame, or it could be an actual explosion. So that's just to get the physics laid down. And so now, when we come back,

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  we're going to find out what the hell were you thinking? And we'll look at the risk factors of your face blowing up when StarTalk continues, Cosmic Queries with Steve-O, Jackass Infamous.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries with Steve-O, who's entering his bucket list tour at a theater near you. Is it just called The Bucket List Tour?

• 29:42Speaker 00

  It's called Steve-O, The Bucket List Tour.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steve-O and The Bucket List Tour. That's all the information you need.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  It's actually somewhat winding down now.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  I'm about to go on a run through Canada. And then I've got some US dates after that.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the book lives on.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  The book lives on.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And remind me the title of it again? It's something about getting kicked in the nuts?

• 30:06Speaker 00

  It's called A Hard Kick in the Nuts: What I've Learned From A Lifetime Of Terrible Decisions.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. So the question I asked about your methane fart mask.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the risk of it blowing up. Were you near any possible spark or flame at the time?

• 30:25Speaker 00

  But there's a pretty fascinating newer one. To explain to you, the fart mask was, it was kind of like, it was a sphere, like a globe. Kind of looked like an astronaut mask type of thing. And it was sort of sealed around the neck and it had a hose coming out of it. And the hose had had a funnel and my buddy Preston held the funnel up to his butt and farted into it. Now, the reality is that I don't see any possible way that any of that fart actually made it through that whole hose and into the mask.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  But what made the bit visually successful was that I just have such a hyperactive imagination that the idea that something might be gross historically has just set me off barfing. So just as he he held this this hose up to his butt, I just started barfing in the mask. Like I didn't smell anything.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It didn't even need the smell.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  Didn't even need the smell. And there was not a the danger of a spark inside the mask. But for our our most recent Jackass movie, which came out this year called Jackass Forever, they brought in a big water tank with this sort of a seating situation in it. And this great guy from Mythbusters, Tori Bilecki, who had an underwater torch. And there is this mechanism to capture farts completely underwater and then.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it'd be a bubble of of air, but it's fart air. Right.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Right. And bring in a bring in a the torch to light it underwater. Now, I could not believe the blast that that caused. And in hindsight, it makes sense to me because like the the philosophy of a pipe bomb. If you try, if you take an explosion and try to contain it, what you're actually doing is just magnifying it.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's correct.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  And so, let me ask you this, does it follow that, that, that same magnification of the explosion from a pipe bomb would apply to an underwater fart? They don't like make the-

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so the, that, the fart bubble is being, is completely surrounded by water, which is much denser than the air itself.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, what, so, just to be clear, any explosion, any explosion is the, you know, in the atmosphere is a, is a high temperature spot that rap, because of the high temperature, rapidly expands the air around it. And it's the expanding air that we think of as the explosion. And if it's a weapon, they put like BBs and nuts and, and nails and things in it, and you get like a grenade, that the expanding air turns the, the shrapnel into, into, because there's, there's the shrapnel that's just the residue of the bomb itself, but there's the shrapnel you can put in on purpose, right?

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that then becomes individual projectiles that can each become deadly. In this case, you have rapidly expanding bubble, but the bubble has its size, right? If you try to make that bubble any bigger instantly, what's the water gonna do? The water's not gonna compress, it has to fly out of the way. It can only just bust out of the way. So it would, it would make a much, it was a brilliant setup, because it would make a much bigger explosion in the water than it would if you just did it in the air, because then that's just air expanding into air.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  I couldn't believe it, it caught me completely off guard.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. So if you did it, if you did it in a balloon, if you wanted to like be physics mythbusters about it, you do it underwater and it explodes the water out of the way, but if you do it in a balloon- And then explode that it'll be like a pop. But it's not going to be a massive thing because it's pushing other squishable things around it called the atmosphere.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  I remember I felt like I had been kicked in the nuts like the blast of the underwater part like it was the water went flying. It was like, whoa, like it was, it was a real, like, I think that that was my, my favorite moment of our most recent Jackass film.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. I love it. And just to, to round out the methane conversation. We, we have found methane on Mars.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oozing out from the sides of ravines. And so there are many, because Mars doesn't have oxygen in its air. So, so where people are wondering, are there microbes buried beneath the surface? Undergoing anaerobic metabolism, metabolism without oxygen. And then it would be releasing methane. So that's one appearance of methane, like in our backyard, for me, it's our backyard Mars. And a moon of Saturn called Titan. The temperature is so low that methane that's on that moon has liquefied. So there are actually rivers of methane going into lakes of methane on Saturn's moon Titan.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So methane, it is a really fascinating molecule. That is sort of the foundation of so much of what's going on in, in organic chemistry. But, so one other thing, at Cornell University, they have a huge agriculture school. Where they have cows that are there for to study. They studied the, the lactation, the, you know, the, the three, however many, four stomachs, however many they have. And one of them, they carved open a side of the cow. You could see into the, and put a plexi window. I, I would think the cow would care about this, but apparently they don't. And you could just see the food come in and get digested. They collect the cow farts.

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they burn the cow farts in the winter to keep the barn warm.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's one closed thermodynamic system. There's a lot going on with methane. So do you, sir, have questions for me?

• 36:45Speaker 00

  I do. We've got, we've got a very short amount of time. There's two things that are, that come to mind as my bigger priorities. I've heard this saying that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but rather we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And I've read different things that talk about how as spirits, we, before we incarnate into this physical body, that we, we choose our parents, that we, we, that there's a blueprint for the, for the experience that we're seeking to have as, in the human body.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  And that as part of the blueprint, there are life events, which are predetermined, that are gonna like just happen. Have you ever heard any of that stuff before?

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've heard about it just briefly. But what I would say is, I, I think it's, it's a beautiful concept. Right? And just turning the tables on something that religious people feel deeply, that we are corporeal experience, how hosting a spiritual entity, be it your soul or anything else. And you, you turn the tables on that. And it's, you're talking about a spirit looking for a body or, or creating, you know, going through the body factory and ordering to, ordering up à la carte, what kind of life experience you wanted your body to have. That would make an amazing science fiction story if it hasn't already been done. And so I'm intrigued by the concept.

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what I can say as a scientist is, if I'm going to apportion my confidence that something is true. I'm gonna apportion that confidence according to how much evidence.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  Right, okay, so you're saying not a lot of evidence to support that theory?

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not a lot of evidence to support spirits floating around, choosing bodies and their parents and life. There's not a lot of evidence for that. I love the idea, though.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, that wouldn't be, you know, that's in the mix of fun sci-fi ideas that people have made movies about. So I'm all in on it. I'll be the first in line at the IMAX. But, um.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I just don't see evidence for that.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Right, okay. Now, um, when we talk about, um, like, what happens after the the end of our physical body?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  We don't, we don't have a lot of evidence for that either, huh?

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so here's, here's what we do have. Consider that many people who have sort of near-death experiences and they come back. Some of them say, oh, I saw a light and I wanted to follow the light. And no one follows up on that to then report that they were near death. They were brought back to life in the hospital on an operating table that has a light over the table.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so if you're dead and then you're coming back, you know, in half consciousness and you see a light, we got it for you, all right? That's the light over the operating table. And there are people who say that they have an out-of-body experience where they look down and see their body. So you can test for that. Here's what you do, all right? You get your relative to write something down on a card, okay? And put it up above the light facing upwards. So that if you have an out-of-body experience and you look down on yourself, you should be able to read what's on that card. So that when you come back to life, you'll say, oh, it said, order me a slice of pizza. Or whatever the, it has to be some simple saying.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that has yet to be duplicated as an experiment. So that's for the out-of-body people. And in terms of what happens to you, of course, reincarnation people are all about that, right? They're totally in on you taking on another form, another human form, or if you're, uh...

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, in India, there's you come back either as a different animal or a lesser animal if you were not good. So there's a lot of people thinking about this. All I can say is that there's evidence from people who have strokes, mini strokes, and you systematically, you can do the the the brain scan and parts of the brain start shutting off bit by bit. If it rather than a catastrophic stroke, I'm talking about little bitty strokes and they lose their language, they lose their ability to identify you, lose their ability to speak. And this just accumulates until they lose their ability to do everything.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they're basically brain dead. So this is evidence that everything you are is manifested in the electrochemical impulses in your brain. And when those impulses go away, we got nothing left for you, except the body. Right. And by the way, your body has energy content. You know how the methane molecule has energy? So does the molecules in your body. It's just not highly flammable. It's not as energetic as a but your body can burn. All right. The fact that something burns means it had energy as part of it. Paper burns because there's energy locked into

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the the the molecules that were once wood in that paper. And it gets released in the form of heat. So your dead body, if you cremate it, your body's energy becomes flames and that energy radiates into space, where it moves at the speed of light across the universe. So in a way, you're still out there. Right. You the energy that was once in you. So that's a little bit of a spiritual thought that actually has root truths in physics and thermodynamics. What about life review? Have you ever heard of that? Is this while you're dying and you see your whole life unfold in front of you?

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm intrigued by that. I know that that's happened to me even when I knew I wasn't about to die. But there was some emotionally stressful moment. It was like, whoa, that was kind of freaky. So maybe it's not that you're about to die, therefore this happens. Maybe your there's a little your brain is been jostled in some way.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it releases these memories that are all there. But at different times of day, depending on whether you've had coffee or Red Bull or whatever, whatever is your stimulant of the moment. You can have different depths of access to your memories. And I try to make sure. Ever see people now? What was it? I some the Pope was visiting a city somewhere and the Pope was going by in the Pope mobile. And everybody had out their smartphone and they're looking at the Pope in the smartphone. I say, it's the Pope. Put down your smartphone and look at the Pope and create a memory on that. What are you doing? And so or anything they pull out the screen and they're looking at their screen.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm thinking people forgot how to cherish a singular memory.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just want to record it on a three inch screen and watch it back on a three inch screen.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  If they ever.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it's not a memory anymore. It's just it's a repeat.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's crazy. I spoke my first words in Portuguese. I spoke Spanish in nursery school. And and I my parents spoke English. I spoke three languages by the age of three and forgot two of them completely by the age of five. However, when I was 11 years old at summer camp, these kids who spoke Portuguese, maybe they were from Brazil, maybe Portugal. They said they were freaking out. They said that in my sleep the night before I was speaking Portuguese in my sleep. Now, I had no access to this language.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  However, it's in there. Like, it's in there.

• 44:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, were you a Portuguese conquistador in an early life? Were you?

• 45:03Speaker 00

  No, my, my father was the president of Pepsi-Cola in Brazil.

• 45:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. Okay, so there's some Portuguese root stock there in some way. So what I would say there is, uh, we need better evidence than just the eyewitness testimony of your fellow campers. And next time this happens, have them set up a recording device.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and then we can listen back and have experts analyze it and not just, I heard you speaking Portuguese.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because consider, they have Portuguese filters in their brains. So if they hear words out there, if they just hear syllables, utterances, and you know to hear Portuguese, they could be selecting Portuguese syllables.

• 45:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm, I'm pretty sure you're not composing complex sentences in your sleep. So we're just talking about utterances here. It could be that they cherry picked

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the bits and pieces and say, I heard you speak Portuguese. So to head that off, you want to do, get data on it and record it so that we can then bring it to the lab. Just, just future advice for you.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  I think that's fantastic. Man, I'll tell you what, Neil, I, I wish we could talk for longer and, uh...

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen, it's great. I'm just glad to know you're alive and you have a high sperm count before your vasectomy. And you, now your sperm count is presumably zero.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I went in for the test afterward. There was not even a corpse on the battlefield.

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not a corpse on the ba- not even one that got through on crutches.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Oh. No, not at all.

• 46:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Steveo, it's been a delight to chat with you. Thanks for being my, uh, host and, and guest, all rolled up in one. We knew you had it in you.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  And likewise, man, thank you.

• 46:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you made it happen. And good luck on your tour and, and the sale. I'm more closer to books than to, to

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to theaters. I mean, I've done work in theaters before, but for me as an academic, the book is the forever record of what you've done. Cause if someone doesn't show up at your show, then unless it's on Netflix or something, they don't see it.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't experience it. But the book is your chance to speak through the ages. And so, uh, I'm glad you have a book out there.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  I got two. This one's my second.

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Second? What was the first one?

• 47:12Speaker 00

  It's called Professional Idiot: A Memoir.

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 47:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I'm gonna go back to that one first.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  Ah, that's the ticket.

• 47:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And read that one before we continue. All right, dude, thanks for being on StarTalk.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Hey, thank you, Neil.

• 47:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, this has been StarTalk, a special Cosmic Queries edition with the one and only Steve-O, who's apparently still alive.

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking out.